​Ryan and I first met when he joined We Roam (now WY_CO) in Morocco in April, but if I’m being honest, I really didn’t know what he did until I sat down to interview him in December. What I appreciated the most in talking to Ryan is how much he values the idea of following your interests. His story makes it clear that when he second-guessed himself and did what he thought he was supposed to, he wasn’t as fulfilled; but when he was attuned to what he found exciting, things started to fall into place. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When you were 17, what did you want to be?

I thought I wanted to do something in engineering, probably mechanical engineering. Growing up, I was always building things, like train sets and that sort of thing. The train sets turned into going to Radio Shack all the time. That was like the toy store for me growing up. I would soup up my remote control cars, and one time I built a little robot out of a box with lights and little motors that I pulled out of my remote control cars.

What is the When I Was 17 Project?

When I Was 17 is a blog series dedicated to collecting the varied stories of people's career paths, what they envisioned themselves doing when they were teenagers and how that evolved over the course of their lives. I started this project with the goal of illustrating that it's okay not to know exactly what you want to do when you're 17; many successful people didn't, and these are a few of their stories.